Ag IoT

 

There is a wonderful tendency in life to want to give everything a name. So rather than say we are providing telemetry solutions to farmers, we can now lay claim to working in the “Ag IoT” space.
 

 

 

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The Ag bit is easy, it would be pretty hard to find someone not comfortable with the use of the abbreviation “Ag” being used for Agriculture.
The IoT bit is not so simple. IoT stands for “Internet of Things” which is basically the idea of connecting everyday objects to the Internet.
Some aspects of IoT are interesting and obvious. Others are just plain odd: such as an Internet enabled doorbell which uses the technology to tell you that your doorbell has rung.

The most positive aspect of  the growth of IoT is that it enables us to start thinking about how to cheaply monitor a lot of  the equipment and facilities on farm that it has previously either been too hard or to expensive to do.

 

 

Internet of Things

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If you have paid some attention, you may have noted that the acronym “TOIP” stands for Telemetry Over Internet Protocols. Our reason for being is to use internet based technology for remote environmental monitoring. This is something we have been doing for many years. Only now we can add a new name to what we do - Ag IoT.
What is best about the “IP” technologies is that they are invisible  to you the end user: all the hard work is separated in to several different layers, with each performing a separate function. You don’t need to know what voltage represents what, or how a message from your SmartPhone ends up on the desk of a user in Belgium. You can just be reassured that it will get there. The reason it all works so well is that the  framework on which everything is built is “open”, so every device understands what every other one has to do.

For too many years Telemetry systems used proprietary technologies, with every manufacturer  defining their own method for moving data from one place to another. That made it very hard for systems to share data. It also made products expensive.

The move to Internet based Telemetry and the subsequent development of the Internet of Things, has completely changed  the landscape : prices have fallen, devices have become more flexible and data can be shared like never before.

 

 

IoT for Ag

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If you believe a lot of the hype seen in the Ag IoT space, you would think that it is a  huge empty space, just waiting for all this new technology to be injected in. The truth could not be further away. Instead, farmers are some of the most technically savvy people around. Many are leaps ahead of their urban cousins in the pace at which they adopt technology. 
It is often not the lack of suitable technology but  a lack of time to learn it which hampers uptake: most farmers would benefit enormously from lots of extra monitoring devices. But, if they have to turn their attention from other tasks to learn and manage the new devices, there is an inevitable cost. And unless the new technologies come with tools to help visualise and understand the data they produce, there is no way for farmers to meaningfully include them in their daily practices.
So the challenge for all of use working in the space is to find ways to overcome these limitations. In the main, that means having a local partner who can sell, install, configure and maintain the gear. Someone who can provide training and assist with data interpretation. And this is where our dealer network comes in to play.

 

 

What we can do

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Throughout this site you will find information on our sensors and telemetry units. All of them are Ag IoT devices. There are sensors for many on farm parameters; there are telemetry units which can utilise the mobile phone (4G, Cat M1) or LoRa WAN networks; and cloud based software for data visualisation and decision support.